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Comment by quyleanh | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure Apple can’t read them too?

They say they can’t, but it’s impossible to be certain. Although, if you distrust Apple enough to think they might lie about it, you probably wouldn’t want to use any Apple device or services. They already have privileged access to the software and hardware.

Yes. SIP means Apple is the real sudo now. You can’t disable their special relationship on their computers

Yes you can. Here are the instructions to disable it:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling...

Doesn't disabling SIP weaken the security?

> They already have privileged access to the software and hardware.

The fact that the phone manufacturer has a more privileged access than the owner of the phone is absolute insanity.

That's pretty normal, isn't it? Do you have more privileged access to your phone than its kernel does?

I'd prefer it to work like a normal computer where there's a separation of the OS and the hardware. But sure, other phones aren't better.

I'm not sure I've used any operating system where I have more privilege than the kernel does.

You can escalate your privilege if you can freely choose which kernel to run. Maybe you won’t have _more_ privilege than the kernel but you would certainly have as much.

I can escalate my privilege to be higher than the kernel's?

> Although, if you distrust Apple enough to think they might lie about it, you probably wouldn’t want to use any Apple device or services.

It's not even about lies. It's about bugs and vulnerabilities, which every vendor has.

I'm considered switching to Mac from linux and I came across your blog which has been very informative. What made you chose mac over linux?

I didn't choose Mac over Linux. I chose Mac over Windows in the year 2002, and I became a Mac developer in 2006. Things were a lot different back then. Now it's too late for me, because my entire livelihood depends on Mac.

Fair enough, I guess you are overall happy with the OS though

Not throwing shade here on your decision, but that's still choosing Mac over Linux and every day you continue to make that choice.

It's a perfectly fine decision, but Linux was, and still is, an option for plenty of people who develop for Apple hardware/software without daily driving it, myself included.

> Linux was, and still is, an option for plenty of people who develop for Apple hardware/software without daily driving it, myself included.

Well, I believe in dogfooding. I don't think it would be good for my software or my customers if I didn't use the same operating system as them. Besides, work-related activities are mostly what I use a computer for, so I'm not sure what I would even do with Linux.

You'd be more in control over having your passwords silently uploaded to a third party without your knowledge or consent, for starters.

Again, full respect for your decisions, but there are consequences to them and as your blog and experience shows, they are numerous and have serious impacts.

Me: work-related activities are mostly what I use a computer for, so I'm not sure what I would even do with Linux.

You: You'd be more in control over having your passwords silently uploaded to a third party without your knowledge or consent

If I mostly use a computer for work purposes, what do you think my passwords are for?

Also, I've been using a Mac since 2002, and iCloud Keychain got toggled on in 2024. It's kind of absurd to suggest, in 20/20 hindsight, that I should have expected it.

Not sure where or what "work passwords" has to do with it, passwords are passwords especially if you're running your own business, which it seems you are.

Do your thing buddy, but I'm not the one who had their (work) passwords were silently uploaded to iCloud without permission.

> Not sure where or what "work passwords" has to do with it

How many times do I have to explain that I use a computer mostly to do work, which is development of Apple software, requiring a Mac, and therefore most of my computer usage is necessarily on a Mac. Consequently, switching to a Linux machine as a "daily driver" is pointless, because I have nothing much to "drive" daily except my work.

Are you sure AES 256-bit hasn't been broken?

Best practices for password storage use one-way hash functions (like bcrypt, Argon2, or PBKDF2) rather than encryption algorithms like AES. AES is not one way and in theory you can generate 2nd, 3rd, etc. master keys to decrypt. :)

That’s relevant when storing a users password to verify that they’ve entered the correct data, but password managers (which Keychain effectively is, I believe) need to be able to retrieve the original password

Frankly, you're confusing hashing algorithms, encryption and "IDs".

Authentication: "Prove you are you" (hash functions)

Secure Storage: "Keep this secret but let me get it back later" (encryption)

Identification: "Track who/what this is" (UUIDs/tokens)

You are deeply confused as to how password managers work.

Password managers—all password managers—require stored passwords to be encrypted such that they can be decrypted. Otherwise they would have no possibly way to retrieve the stored secret for the sake of submitting it to the verifying party.

Best practice for verifiers is to use a one-way memory-hard password hash.

Keychain is a password manager.

>Secure Storage: "Keep this secret but let me get it back later" (encryption)

This is what keychain does. You retrieve the passwords later.

So, no. It is not a one-way hash function as you stated.

A thought experiment:

Use Argon2 to hash a password before storing it in the password manager. Now the user visits that website and wants to log in. What is it that the password manager pastes into the login form?

Answer: the plaintext password. But how do you get that out of the hashed value you stored earlier? You don’t. Ergo, password managers cannot use hashing functions to store their contents.

They own the OS. They don't need to break it to access your passwords

I am not sure if you are ignorant or what, but GP obviously means someone else other than Apple

It means Apple. See: "Are you sure Apple can’t read them too?".

Next time you insult someone, better use your cognition powers to avoid looking like that which you call others

My bad, I didn't mean to insult you. I meant it as a criticism

By GP, u/blitzar's comment, my cognition tells me that his comment meant anyone can break AES 256-bit encryption, including Apple, but in this context, he could have meant everyone else

Note that you have to break 3 independent levels of AES encryption.

One for password key column, one for value column and one for the password file.

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